GBWYTWMA: concerning journeys

Sometimes life gets a little . . . heavy.

        And the day finally was upon us. On its eve, much to my distress, I learned that packing with Cam had only been a preliminary packing. Not the real deal. That the real deal hadn’t been done, and the laundry had to be dried before we could even approach the concept of the real deal. Death bed sock searches. Did he buy twelve or thirteen of the swell, last you two years, let your feet breath black socks? Twelve pair we found. Question answered. Then, sadly, one more – not a pair, but a single sock. Silent witness of the fact that my house is still infested with at least one more of the dang things.

One comfort: on the very verge of our leaving the house the night before to transport Sultan and his gigantic dog carrier to the airlines, Gin and Kris decided not to take him. Things at the new house weren’t settled enough yet, and Kris had weeks of classes in the city. Reprieve. And to this day, Sultan’s brave, bouncing self joins our own two, jamming the way to the front door so that you can’t reach lock to key.

Trying out Sultan’s suit case.  After the fun, Sultan wasn’t sure he wanted to get into it ever again.

Dog jam

They kids played the last piano duets for a while. We hung out with Cam and L. And then we slept. Not sure how. It’s a combination of Christmas and Doom.

Next morning, an uncharacteristic breakfast of whole wheat pancakes with all the family denizens within a two block radius. All seven of us, counting Scoot, who ate no pancakes. And then he got dressed in his eternal Sunday go to meetin’s.

And we hefted the bags. And we drove to the MTC.

Elder Randle: three bags full

Checkin’ in the luggage

Hmmmm.  Wonder why there’s no picture of the mommy?

I gave out a lot of Kleenex there. Other mothers were tearing up all over. I was just tired.  We sat through the family meeting, heard some interesting stats about the place itself. And then – poof – time to go.

Murphy stood up. We stood up. He was like a fine horse at the race gate. We were like – ummm. Lumps? Gigantic hugs. Last best wishes and loves. And as he walked away, two years rose up between us like a shimmering mist. He turned back, so much love in his face. And then he was gone to his work, his wonderful, glorious, selfless work.

And we went home. To irrigate.

I do not take pictures of irrigation. It’s not pretty. You have to get grease and dirt all over you, and you have to really, really work on being a good person, because you find other people’s gates carelessly left open, or unexpectedly left closed. And then you either get way more water than you counted on, or way less.

But that was over in a hectic couple of hours. I dream at night of gigantic, acre covering non-horse-threatening sprinklers.

And then, up sprang family. New family. Not new so much as not usually here family. Guy’s cousin’s gorgeous, wonderful, delightful wife, Kellie, and her coolest ever mom made their first ever visit to our fair state, toting a daughter who they’d enrolled in a clogging camp at the university.

Oh, my gosh – it was almost like reading Dickens. They loved the valley, they loved BYU, they loved the people. I started squinting at things, looking for wings on the backs of people and halos hovering in the air. “Why didn’t we MOVE here?” Kellie said gleefully. So we spent the next two days, Chaz and I, trying to convince her that they should.

We showed them the house (“I’ve seen pictures of this house!”), the horses (which were gratifyingly admired), the river path (which didn’t work out so swell because of the mosquitoes). We took her to the mountains, showed her our favorite spots, like the stone theater above Aspen Grove, explored the art shack at Sundance (which I had only heard about) where we saw a man fish a hank of glowing molten glass out of a white hot furnace with a stick – and right there in front of us, in a matter of maybe 50 seconds, turn it into a lily. We went back and toured our own backyard, presenting our river as if we’d made it ourselves, and then shared more of the secrets of the house (including Guy’s Fabulous Bread Recipe).

That night, we had dinner at Gigi’s gorgeous place, and I will not tell you about how they’d just finished their huge basement, and how I almost sat on the floor and cried when I saw the new bathroom down there. But I will tell you about the good conversation and chicken and cousins who showed up.

Next day, Gigi joined us – no. She actually took us all up to Temple Square and we spent the morning looking at everything and having dinner on the terrace of the JS building – gorgeous, gorgeous, delicious. We had a fabulous time. Thinking back on it, I can almost feel that fabulousness all over again. Kellie and Jackie were like a total shot of B1—they sucked up our sorrows, made us feel like something rare and were generally balm in Gilead. If I could bottle Kellie up, I’d spray her on my mirror, and never be afraid of it again. I think – I think she was a kind of dear angel, actually. Sent to deliver.

If we want pictures of this outing, we’ll have to wait for the BLOG Kellie is promising to put together. 

Saturday, we showed Kellie (in her last hour here) our last treasure: the family lunch at Burger Supreme. But just before that, my sister called out of the blue. She was here. Here from Texas. Here to drop off her youngest child at BYU for the summer. It was like a family tag-team. So we went to Burgers with Kellie and her mom, introduced her to Abdel (possibly the sweetest man on earth) and double bacon cheeseburgers. Then came home and I met my Kev for lunch (I didn’t eat at burgers – just so you know), and that turned into my brother and wife coming down for the evening and making a party of it.

Kind of like keeping balloons in the air – they never let us touch the ground for three whole days. And then church was great. Better than usual. Wonderful.

And after that: life.

Which has NOT turned out to be a sudden freedom to do anything I want whenever I want, though I keep waiting for the waters to part, and the golden paved road of empty nest heaven to open before me.

The problem is, I had this blog to finish, and a horse to de-silver, another irrigation, some deep research into why I lose metadata when I save .jpeg to .png—bills, appointments, business put off. And I’m planning a 4th of July bash with our friends.

You see? I do it to myself.

“Pony” yet to be de-silvered

But here is the end, or beginning, actually, of Murphy’s tale: we have gotten two letters and three emails, and one phone call (to tell us that his visa is delayed, which is no surprise). And I have bought him three more pair of socks (just in case), three more sketch books (just for fun), three more t-shirts (just for p-day) and a water filtering bottle (just for dysentery, or whatever you might get when you’re in the wild, which he might end up being, but we don’t know yet, because he isn’t there yet because he doesn’t have a visa.

Ta-da.

Oh, here it is.  She’s safe when she’s fussing.  But don’t tell her I put this one up – she looks so old and flappy.

gbwytwma: translation: God be with you till we meet again . . . which we may not sing in church again for a long time.